Loyalty

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band--"Be True (live)" (mp3)

This is, without apology, a rant driven by a coach leaving and his new school and a feeling of betrayal and all of that that happened tonight.

And, it is written by someone who has worked at the same place for 26+ years, which, I realize, in 2010, is ungodly weird.

Is there no loyalty in the world anymore?

Believe me, I'm not naive. I know all about opportunity and advancement and wanting to climb the ladder or to be the best or to maximize one's potential. I know that these are All-American values preached all the way from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.

But, seriously, is loyalty a dead concept?

Perhaps I should go back and find a definition. After all, what is loyalty? Merriam-Webster defines "Loyalty" as "the quality or state or an instance of being loyal." Which is completely un-fucking-helpful. So, on we go, following the link to "Fidelity," which the same site defines as "faithfulness to something to which one is bound by pledge or duty."

And, yeah, that will do the job for us, won't it?

My first problem is this: half of me believes that an institution that treats one well deserves loyalty, and half of me believe that it doesn't. Because, after all, it is an institution, and, as such, is an unfeeling, somewhat intangible entity whose name is invoked mainly in an attempt to inspire loyalty.

My second problem is this: when we throw out the concept of an institution, we are left with people--players or students or colleagues or whomever is impacted by an early departure. Because that's what disloyalty is about, isn't it? It isn't that someone leaves; it's that that person leaves before his or her time.

Once upon a time, there was a Spanish teacher at this school who left at mid-year to bicycle his way through South America. He was a likeable enough guy, I guess, and people would want to give me updates about him. "Not interested," I would say, "He is dead to me." Those people would look at me surprised. "He left his students hanging in the middle of the year to go biking in South America," I would say, "I have no respect for that at all." And I didn't. And I don't. There is an unspoken agreement that a teacher will hang with his or her students for a year, come Hell or high water.

What goes through your head when you screw other people in order to do what is best for you? Does the money make it okay? Do you tell yourself it was the chance of a lifetime and that you had to take it? Do you tell yourself that it was God's will? What other lies can the mind conjure up?

I fear that, in America, unspoken agreements aren't effective anymore, because if they are unspoken, if they are not on paper, perhaps notarized, able to be upheld in a court of law, then they don't mean anything at all. If so, that is very, very sad. That means that unless you hold me to it, unless it was written into my contract, then I am in no way bound to honor it.

I believe that when you take on a team, a class, a job, you see it through until it is completed, at least until you meet some open-to-interpretation definition of completed. You don't have to win the title or anything, but you do have to make the things right that weren't right when you took whatever it was on. If you were hired to do a specific job, then you stay with that job until the person that hired you is reasonably satisfied. Not everything in this life is immediate. Not every opportunity comes at us in such a way that we have act now or forever regret it. No, there are plenty of opportunities that arise exactly because we stuck with something that maybe people didn't think we would stick with. Yeah, we came back for our senior year or, yeah, we helped return a program to its winning ways, or, yeah, we finished out the school year, or, yeah, someone simply asked us to do something for x amount of time and we were true to our word.

That's loyalty. And that's right.

I stumbled across the live Bruce at Addicted To Vinyl.com. Great site.

Whip Me Beat Me Call Me Your B**ch!

Wounded - Third Eye Blind (mp3)
Beat on the Brat - Ramones (mp3)

In vino veritas.

"In wine, truth."

When we drink to excess, sometimes we're not wise enough to keep from saying stuff we probably shouldn't say. And here's basically what I sat at a bar tonight and told two very die-hard Cubs fans: "Die-hard Cubs fans are worse than abused spouses."

Now that I've had a few hours to contemplate my statement... well, I'm not remotely ashamed of it. In fact, I'm pretty proud.

Here we are, as a society, judging Rihanna for going back to that dillweed Chris Brown, who beat the crap out of her for God-knows-what and God-knows-why, and we stand around our water coolers discussing how pathetic she is, and how sad her life must be that she would stand by a guy like that. Meanwhile, half of Boston's teens think Rihanna asked for it.

And we should. We should have that conversation. Because something's wrong when a talented, beautiful woman can't break away from a man who disfigures her. If nothing else, it insults and devalues passive and kind geeks like me who go their whole lives without throwing a single punch at anyone, even dudes who really really deserve it (if only they wouldn't punch back).

As pissed off and activated as Oprah might be about this crap, you know who gets even more up in a dander about Rihanna? Geeks. Meek good and decent guys who have limits and live humble decent lives. We get pissed off. Waaaay pissed off. And we should be. It ain't right that the Chris Browns of the world get the girl and the gold while we're off to the side, spitting sand out of our mouths.

Here we are, fighting for every dollar, devoting our lives to whatever meager existence we can eke out and doing our best not to gripe too much about it. We're making ends meet. Getting by. Playing by (most of) the rules.

And then there's Chris Brown. The only reason we know his name, aside from the fact that it's a generic boring terrible name, is that he's had a few hits that some songwriters and producers crafted, to which they've superglued his face. Chris Brown is Heidi Klum with less attractive breasts and a better voice. He's a Simon Cowell-endorsed gigolo.

But then you have these Cubs fans. They might not be all that pissy about what's happened to Rihanna, but if you were to ask their opinion, 99.5% of them would say she's a stupid b*#ch for going back to the guy. And their reaction would make perfect sense, becuase she's a stupid b*#ch for going back to the guy (if indeed she has, which is apparently in question).

But...!

How about you follow up that question to a Cubs fan by asking this: Why are you a Cubs fan?

And just listen to 'em. They'll go on forever with all these great reasons. The tradition. The history. The ballpark. The faithfulness of sitting in those stands, decade after decade, never winning a title, constantly being hapless and hopeless but never giving up hope. Hell, last night, a Cubs fan and frequent reader of this blog made this statement, "Everyone is sick of the Red Sox. They're just like the Yankees now. The Cubs are the only place you'll find the true fans."

The fan who offers these sad excuses is Rihanna, except exponentially more pathetic. They might as well say "I fell down the stairs" or "He swears he loves me and won't ever hit me again."

For more than a century, the Cubs have shit on their fans. The Cubs have beaten their fans about the face, crotch, chest, ribs, arms and legs. Cubs fans have so many bruises and scars on them that it's a wonder they can leave the house without wheelchairs and Hospice nurses. And rational people like me want to feel sorry for them. We want to pity them, because they love the Cubs, and that's kinda pitiful.

But here's what Cubs fans do. They tell you how proud they are. They wear their bruises and scars with pride. They act like they're special because they've been bruised and beaten worse than other fans.

These dudes... they mock Rihanna. Rihanna got beaten ONCE. ONE FUCKING TIME. Chris Brown had a bad moment and unleashed his knuckles in her face for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the Cubs and their owners and managers and players have been punching and kicking and spitting on their fans for more than a century -- more than a century!!! -- and their fans stand firm.

Cubs fans talk about being tried and true like it's something special. Cubs fans don't wonder when to jump ship lest it seem disloyal. Meanwhile, the Florida Marlins have won two World Series and can't sell out half their stadium. Now you tell me, why do the Cubs deserve more loyalty than the Marlins? Why should anyone continue to be loyal to an entity that not only doesn't care about them, but beats them senseless and takes their money without the slightest sense of guilt?

Detroit Lions fans at least know not to be proud of it. They're fans, but they're humbled and ashamed. Their team sucks, and they know it, and they don't go bragging about it like sucking is something special. Cubs fans could learn something from those folks.

And Rihanna, baby? Call me if you want to be treated well by a geeky older guy who wouldn't harm a hair on your head.

(Oh yeah, and, um, I'll introduce you to my wife... and I can't promise that she'll be so nice...)

Both of these songs can be purchased through iTunes or Amazon.com. But Cubs fans probably won't buy them 'cuz they'd rather spend time bragging about how loyal and awesome they are with a steel-tipped cleet grinding around in their jaw.

Devil's Advocate for the Adulterous Advocate

Your Next Lover - Lori McKenna (mp3)
A Girl in California - Nine Days (mp3)

I caught wind of John Edwards' daliances slightly ahead of the curve thanks to my regular visits to Plastic.com, a geeky little discussion + news site that posted this as it was starting to really percolate in late July. So I felt like friggin' Drudge when Edwards came out and shocked the world with his confession last week.

The reaction of acquaintances has been fairly surprising, to be honest. Shock, mostly. Edwards' infidelity has been a much larger surprise to (left-leaning?) people, it seems, than that of Wild Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, I'm like, The dude pays FOUR HUNDRED FRIGGIN' DOLLARS to get his friggin' hair cut! He spends as much on his hair per year as Spitzer spent on that prostitute. Any guy who loves his own hair that much is waaaay too full of himself to sleep exclusively with one woman.

But here are some other thoughts that have sprouted from the Edwards scandal:

FORGIVENESS
Edwards said he has sought his wife's forgiveness and his God's forgiveness, and so he basically doesn't care what the rest of us think. Since it's hardly our business to begin with, I couldn't agree more. If you enjoy this story for its juicy context, or if you enjoy watching the overly ambitious and well-coiffed get their come-uppance, that's fine and good. But I'm kind of violently anti-TMZ and anti-paparazzi at the moment, and for me this is just a slightly higher-class version of celebrity rubbernecking I can do without. This really should be between him, his wife, and his deity of choice. Well, and the "other woman "who seems to have gotten a sweet-ass deal out of it.

BUT HE LIED! HE DENIED IT!
If reporters gave a flip about my private life -- and if you thought The Truman Show was a boring concept, my daily existence is even more snooze-a-riffic -- and had the unmitigated gall to ask me if I was having affairs, or smoking crack, or surviving solely on a diet of Pop Tarts, Mountain Dew and Twizzlers, I'd like to think I could answer them in such a way that gave them nothing good yet amused me to no end.

If they ask and you say "No" because it's the truth, then you're only helping their cause, because they can then use you as an example of those who "have nothing to hide," allowing them to bring down that judgmental hammer harder on another's head. So I'd like to think I would say I'm sleeping with everyone. Kate Beckinsale. Ashley Judd. The whole cast of The Golden Girls (except for Estelle Getty, of course, God rest her sweet soul). Tom Cruise. Barbara Bush (the older AND the younger). Say their names, I'm sleeping with them. And they're all just using me for the sex.

My point is, once Edwards screwed around, is he really obligated to, according to our society's odd little rules, confess it in detail to the first reporter to ask the oh-so original question of "Have you ever had an affair?" Is George W. Bush required to explain in great detail his past drug use or even admit he did cocaine just because some bonehead asks him? Are we really better off as a country if they tell the truth to us when it's none of our business?

In my book, if goobers with no right to do so ask anyone such questions, it's not lying to tell them whatever you want. "I sleep with Martians. We spoon, mostly, but sometimes we use toys on each other. I prefer Martian Menages after my Martian Massages. And if you've never been rubbed down by a Martian, you haven't truly lived!"

BAD APPLES MAKE BAD ORANGES?
Our Puritanical society has somehow bought into the bullshit that you can't be a great politician without being a lily-white clean slate of perfect family values. Being outstanding or gifted in one area of life does not require being outstanding or gifted in another. That's like saying you can't be a great rock guitarist without sleeping with 40 women a year. Or that Donald Trump can't be successful in real estate unless he's also a devoted and loving father. It's so oddly unrealistic and foolish that I don't even know why we continue to allow this myth to propagate.

"THE WORST TIME TO DO IT"
Almost every person I've heard pontificate on his infidelity says something akin to this: "And he couldn't have done it at a worse time. His wife is fighting for her life against cancer, and he's off fucking around! What a jerk!" First off, I wasn't aware there was a proper or acceptable time for adultery. Is there some space shuttle re-entry in adultery, where there's a few "perfect windows" in the atmosphere wherein it's acceptable and understandable for married folks to screw around?

Jimmy's always been a devoted husband and father, and although he slept with that drunk librarian two years ago, it was at a time when his wife was healthy and everything in his life was going well, so it was no big deal. If he'd fucked that librarian back when Shelly had been diagnosed with diabetes, well, that would have been another story... Then Jimmy would have been one disgusting sumbitch.

Let's go one step further. (Since my writing on this entire topic automatically qualifies me for the "Perhaps He Protesteth Too Much" Award, no point in leaving any stones unturned.)

Isn't it maybe a little more acceptable for the dude to seek his needs elsewhere at a time when his wife is utterly and completely incapable of being there for him? So long as Edwards didn't abandon his wife emotionally, so long as he was there in the ways she needed him, why isn't his shoplifting some pootie on the side more acceptable when Elizabeth is sick rather than when she's shiny and healthy as a pearl?

If one of you readers is willing, I would really appreciate you breaking down the Affair Scale for me. From 1-10, when's having an affair a 1 and when is it a 10? This might help all those readers out there who want to know when it's most acceptable to have an affair. If they're gonna be immoral, at least they can be considerate.

"Your Next Lover" is from Lori McKenna's super-mega-awesome album Unglamorous. "A Girl in California" is from Nine Days' latest EP, Slow Motion Life Part I. Both can be purchased through iTunes or on Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Our Strange Musical Loyalties

These Days - R.E.M. (mp3)

Sometimes our ties to music are stronger than the bonds of logic or love. If you have ever found moments where music became a timestamp on your life, you'll understand.

I had a roommate in college whose first sexual encounter with a girlfriend happened while Don Henley's "In a New York Minute" was playing on his stereo. That song became their song. So what if the song is about a family man jumping in front of a subway train. Yes, a song about suicide, imploring us to enjoy each fragile minute became, in the minds of two people for a short time, a song about the way they felt towards one another. Deep down, he knew it was screwed up to have this song as their special song. But they bumped fuzzies to it, so logic and lyrics flew out the window.

(Obviously the relationship was doomed. All those couples who thought "Under the Bridge" was their special song have long gotten divorced by now, too. Hell, I didn't even go into the bad choice of choosing a song titled "In a New York Minute" for your LuvMakin' song. Why not use "Mack the Knife" while you're at it?)

In an odd way, a 25-year-old Athens band has just such an irrational hold on me. R.E.M. is like the church I've attended my whole life but for whom I would rarely evangelize. Stipe's quartet is so interwoven into the fabric of my adolescent life that, even if I could somehow manage to admit I didn't think they were all that stupendous, I still couldn't dissect myself from them. This kind of musical attachment is proof that nicotine and alcohol aren't the only substances that can instill lifelong addictions if we start young and impressionable enough.

In 8th grade, the first girl I ever kissed introduced me to R.E.M. Technically, I didn't kiss her. It depends on what your definition of "kiss" is.

She was the girlfriend of a classmate. They prank called my house on a weekend night, and I amused her so much she called me back after her beau left. And then she invited me to visit her the very next night. She would be mere blocks away, babysitting.

Having never been invited for such a rendezvous, and having no clue just how over my head I was about to get, of course I went. I was so excited about it I don't even know if I slept that night. After she got the kids down, we sat in this living room and talked about our lives while listening over and over to her brand new LP of Life's Rich Pageant. A lot of guys at school talked about R.E.M., but I wasn't cool and was still listening to radio crap like Lionel Richie and Tears for Fears. By the time both sides had played through several times -- with a few extra spins of "Superman" for good measure -- it was time for me to leave.

She asked me for a goodnight kiss. She might as well have asked me to rebuild a car engine, since neither was something I'd done before. To say I was nervous painfully understates it. I was practically wetting myself and truly vibrating with nerves. But I went for it. I closed my eyes, leaned towards her, and ended up firmly planting my lips just above her right collarbone.

The shame of my bad aim had me running tuck-tailed out the door and fleeing on my bike homeward. But not before my chain snapped going down the driveway, sending me sailing over the handlebars. Not only had I humiliated myself by being less sexually experienced than most first graders, but I had also caused her to further pity me with a move straight out of Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

It wasn't a perfect First Kiss memory, but it at least helped keep my future expectations with the fairer sex very low.

The precious silver lining was that she lighted my alternative rock path. Life's Rich Pageant was just the first step in my adolescent musical evolution, but a crucial one. The equivalent of the tadpole crawling up on the shore before sprouting legs.

R.E.M.'s significance doesn't even stop there.

Their Green Tour was my second concert. Ever. The Indigo Girls opened up for them, which meant Stipe & Co. were also responsible for introducing me to my favorite pair of songwriting lesbians on the planet.

Along with the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun," R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" was easily the most played song for our school dances, so I owe Stipe et al the few and precious opportunities to dance with girls, even if our dancing was more like bad scenes from The Breakfast Club. But even that was an oasis in my sex-starved desert of high school, so my gratitude is painfully valid.

Like my New York Minuteman, I was hopelessly devoted to R.E.M. The fact that Document and Green continued to amaze me (even as they began pushing away the cooler kids who claimed the band had sold out) only further cemented my loyalties. I remained loyal through New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which is easily one of the more underrated albums of the mid-90s. Monster sounded like the band really wanted to be cool like those young Seattle grungy people who had overtaken their hipness, but Hi-Fi sounded like they just wanted to have fun again, play around with sound and take some silly risks.

R.E.M. has always been at their best when their shoe-gazing and heavy lyrics are a secondary priority to making really catchy (and, preferably, primarily upbeat) music. I didn't buy UP because it was so decidedly not up. It was the first album of theirs I did not purchase. I have to this day listened to maybe two songs from it, not out of protest, but because I never got the feeling I was missing much.

I did purchase Reveal and spent the next month wondering why I did, so I sure as hell wasn't paying for Around the Sun. I was done with R.E.M. I had finally broken away from them and their pull on my nonsensical emotions.

So why the hell am I sitting here and typing this while Accelerate plays on my iTunes, you ask? Because they brought back these things called drums. And they brought back this thing called tempo. And they apparently realized that heavy-handed castor oil never goes down well without a spoonful of sugar. R.E.M. went and pulled a U2. They returned to the well from which they found their greatest successes. They accepted the painful reality that they can't be all things to all people, but that they also suck when they don't care about being anything to anyone but themselves.

You break up with that girl you love because she's no longer what you fell in love with, or because you've changed and she hasn't, or some other incompatibility bullshit. Well, R.E.M. started working out again. They lost all that weight they'd gained. They saw a therapist. They found themselves again and came back to my door asking for forgiveness, begging for a second try.

I bought Accelerate because sometimes our ties to music are stronger than the bonds of logic or love. Nine bucks to reward a nod to their glory days and reinvigorate a 20-year romance. Money well spent.

Leave - R.E.M. (mp3)

"These Days" is from Life's Rich Pageant. "Leave" is from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Billy didn't include a song from Accelerate because he figures R.E.M. and the corporate giants for whom they toil have magic fingers and eyes, and we don't want to get spanked. But if I were to post a single song from the album, it would prolly be "Hollow Man. "Just sayin'. You can purchase Accelerate at Amazon for $8.99 or at iTunes for an over-inflated $13.99.